3 Contenders for District Job Withdraw

Three of the five superintendent candidates presented this week to the Los Angeles Board of Education said Wednesday that they are not interested in the job, and a fourth has indicated he has deep reservations.

Complicating the already rocky search, a state Senate committee voted 10-0 for a bill that would place a state monitor over the Los Angeles Unified School District. The bill was amended to delay the appointment for one year, but school district officials still fear that the prospect of state oversight could make the superintendent’s job unattractive to some candidates.

The shrinking list of candidates underscores the difficulty the board faces in finding a leader for a huge and beleaguered school system that is going through a wrenching reorganization.

Sources close to the search said former San Antonio mayor and U.S. housing secretary Henry G. Cisneros has told friends he has family concerns that would weigh against his accepting the job if it were offered.

Two school superintendents under consideration by the board have backed out.

Dennis Smith, superintendent in Orlando, Fla., told The Times he withdrew his name. Smith was recently named superintendent of the Placentia-Yorba Linda school system in Orange County.

Houston Supt. Rod Paige, who just got a raise to $275,000 a year, said at a Wednesday news conference that he is not leaving the Texas city.

Another contender, teacher union leader Adam Urbanski of Rochester, N.Y., told The Times on Wednesday that he was never interested in the job and has consistently told the selection committee so.

“While I suppose I should be grateful for the compliment, and I’m flattered, and I am interested in educational issues, I have no experience managing school districts,” Urbanski said.

He said he had volunteered to advise the selection committee and has told the panel that he considers the job too demanding for a single person.

The final candidate, former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, reiterated Wednesday that he is a “serious candidate” for the job. “I put my name in the hat and said I’d like to be considered for this . . . I don’t start a process like that unless I am serious about it,” he said.

At a committee hearing last week on the proposed legislation to establish state oversight, interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines testified that a monitor would make it harder for the district to attract top-flight candidates.

Cortines softened his objections Wednesday after the measure’s author, state Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), accepted several amendments.

Polanco agreed to delay the appointment of the monitor until July 1, 2001, and to scrap provisions that would have put the new state overseer directly in charge of the district.

If the district doesn’t show improvement in three years, the monitor could start a process to break up the district.

Cortines said he hopes the year would give a strong, administrator time to show state officials that the district can reform itself without state oversight.

“I don’t think they [job candidates] would be as discouraged,” Cortines said Wednesday. “I think they would see that there has been a great deal of movement.”

The bill must still get through the Senate appropriations committee and, because it is an urgency measure, would require a two-thirds vote on the Senate floor.

But some opposition by Republicans on the committee disappeared Wednesday.

“I see this as the state getting involved not to pronounce an edict, but to allow some assistance,” said state Sen. Bruce McPherson (R-Santa Cruz), one of two Republicans who joined the committee’s eight Democrats in voting for the measure.

McPherson said he opposed the version of the bill presented to the committee last week, but changed his vote partly in deference to the committee’s Los Angeles area members.

The committee’s third Republican, Raymond Haynes of Riverside, was absent. At last week’s hearing, Haynes strongly opposed the monitor as an unwarranted government expense.

Despite the amendments, Cortines still objected to many aspects of the bill.

He said the bill would create a new layer of bureaucracy and reverse his efforts to shift the district management from a top-down approach to an inclusive method that involves parents, teachers, administrators and the community.